2012 IM World Championship broadcast on NBC ... (Page 3)

I watch the live broadcast for the Pro race.  The NBC broadcast is for the human interest, drama, and AG stories.

This year's NBC broadcast failed miserably in my mind.  It didn't show the true tension of the actual pro race (especially the women's) and obviously the biggest loss was they more than cut in half the AG stories.

PS. WTF was up with the lighting on the Pro interviews at the beginning... seriously  W.T.F.!?!

No kidding!  

Agreed!  Too much time devoted to pre race, then not enough time spent on AGers.  Last year they had more coverage of them and I love to hear how each one got there and the struggles they face.  

It was like they were in a darkened room, lit only by a computer screen, like the camera was a web cam mounted on the monitor.  I thought Leanda Cave looked particularly bad.  The light really reflected off her eyes and accentuated how white (from wearing sunglasses) the skin around her eyes was.  Creepy.

+1 !  It was really distracting to watch! 

True about being in a tough spot trying to predict what will happen, but this is where I think they should have made an adjustment. When they saw that Crowie and Macca didn't do well, they should have significantly shortened their part of the pre-race piece on the broadcast and expanded coverage elsewhere. They must have had more footage in the can of other pre-race favorites, the Legacy entrants and the Inspired entrants. For the latter two, they focused on one of each, but they had many more options. I think the Rinny coverage fit pretty well though. They talked about her being behind early on the bike, but pushing later and they showed how she pushed Cave in the run.

I agree with those who have said it missed the drama in general. For me though, the gold standard is still the 1995 race with Bill Bell stretching for the line to finish after midnight and everything else has fallen short for me.

I felt a little blah, too. The pro race was good, but I wanted to see more age groupers. They seemed to focus on the Kona Inspired People and the one Legacy guy, and then teased us with "more legacy stories" on a video we can buy. Kind of a bummer.

I had it on the DVR and just watched it......best show yet as far as I'm concerned.  I don't like the AG stories, we've all got one....I want to see the pros race.  

Also,  I was very happy to not see a parade of tired old people falling down toward their finish....I always thought that was stupid and not really indicative of the sport.

Hey that's how i'm gonna get on the TV in Melbourne - you gotta be last or you don't make it on the show!

Yawn. I actually fell asleep during it. It was nice having more of the pro race coverage, but let's not forget that the coverage of this race over the many, many years with all of the human interest stuff is a big reason why a lot of people got into triathlon, specifically Ironman in the first place.

She had a super cute skirt on.  I remembered seeing the skirt way earlier in the run and thinking, "Gee, that's a really cute skirt." :D

And yes, she made it by 40 seconds I think.  For some reason the big clock on the finish line wasn't matching the actual race time.  It was off by quite a bit.

Oh, and one thing they didn't show, which was super cool....

We stayed to watch the midnight finishers.  But as we walked down Ali'i drive towards our condo after the midnight finish, we saw/heard a big crowd of people coming down the street cheering quite loudly.

As they ran by there was a physically challenged athlete running in the middle of this big crowd...still headed towards the finish line.  He was a single leg amputee.  He must have missed the finish by less than 10 minutes...but he was still going...and he had a HUGE cheering section.  It was really nifty (well, in a somewhat sad sort of way since you knew he wasn't going to be an official finisher).

One thing that struck me is how boring/strange the pros can be.  Leanda Cave came off kind of cuckoo.   The weird lighting in the interviews was distracting, especially with Macca.   With Rinny, she's so focused on the race that the race week coverage was just... boring.    I liked the pieces about Crowie, too bad that was the last we saw of him!  They really lucked out having gotten so much footage about Leanda Cave.  

In a way I liked the heavier focus on the pros during the race, because that was always light in the details.    They often gloss over the women's bike race entirely. 

But yeah, with less age grouper stories it lost a lot of its appeal.  This might be the first time I've watched the Kona broadcast without shedding a tear

I just assumed those interviews were the IM crew gave them cameras to video themselves at their leisure or maybe some pre-arranged questions etc. Looked like they were filming like "Survivor Man" style- in the woods at night bad lighting etc.

I liked the two older ladies who battled in 1982 who came back and competed. That was cool.

Leanda Cave (sp) kind of came off with an attitude- yes, I know she's bad-a-- and can be that way, but to someone who doesn't know her in the sport, it was a bit of a turnoff.  Oh, and it's a little much to go all "on race day, my competitors are my enemy and I want to kill them all...". She backtracked pretty quick with a "I'm just kidding" sort of deal, but it was weird.

I follow her on twitter and let's just say I would not want my young daughter to read some of what she posts. Contrast that to Crowie- just always seems cool, calm, polite, friendly etc leading up. Just my perception from afar.